Sertão, space and time

family conflicts and private revenge

Abstract

This article intends to make some reflections about the family quarrels in the Jaguaribe Valley, in the Ceará backlands, trying to understand how values such as honor, courage, valor, considered archaic, traditional, are still current and active in this region. In this imaginary economy produced by these "family conflicts," we see how these values are constantly fed into a web of multiple feelings — hatred, fear, resentment, the desire for revenge — that culminates in the practice of violence. Our proposal has therefore been to understand which elements, which such segmented lines make this practice, which is strongly amalgamated in the subjectivities of the Brazilian hinterlands, last.